Related papers: Colliding Black Holes: The Close Limit
We construct approximate analytical solutions to the constraint equations of general relativity for binary black holes of arbitrary mass ratio in quasicircular orbit. We adopt the puncture method to solve the constraint equations in the…
Our aim in this work is to outline some physical consequences of the interaction between black holes and scalar field halos in terms of gravitational waves. In doing so, the black hole is taken as a static and spherically symmetric…
Ten short years ago, we had the rare privilege of witnessing the onset of a renaissance in science: humanity finally succeeded in its arduous quest to directly detect gravitational waves. This breakthrough did not occur in a vacuum: it was…
We are living through the dawn of the era of gravitational wave astronomy. Our first glances through this new window upon the sky has revealed a new population of objects. Since it first began observing in late 2015, the advanced Laser…
Black holes are the most compact objects in the Universe. According to general relativity, black holes have a horizon that hides a singularity where Einstein's theory breaks down. Recently, gravitational waves opened the possibility to…
At the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, participants of the rapid response workshop on the gravitational wave background explored discrepancies between experimental results and theoretical models for a background originating from…
The merging of two black holes is a notoriously difficult process to describe exactly. Nevertheless, the hindrances posed by gravity's nonlinearity can be circumvented by focusing on the strict extreme mass ratio limit, in which one of the…
A powerful technique to calculate gravitational radiation from binary systems involves a perturbative expansion: if the masses of the two bodies are very different, the "small" body is treated as a point particle of mass $m_p$ moving in the…
Is the graviton massless? This problem was addressed in the literature at a phenomenological level, using modified dispersion relations for gravitational waves, in linearized calculations around flat space. Here, we perform a detailed…
Two coalescing black holes (BHs) represent a conspicuous source of gravitational waves (GWs). The merger involves 17 parameters in the general case of Kerr BHs, so that a successful identification and parameter extraction of the information…
We consider a very simple model for gravitational wave echoes from black hole merger ringdowns which may arise from local Lorentz symmetry violations that modify graviton dispersion relations. If the corrections are sufficiently soft so…
The problem of the event horizon in relativistic gravity is discussed. Singular solutions in general relativity are well known. The Schwarschild metric of a spherical mass is singular at zero ($r = 0$) and at the event horizon ($r = r_g$).…
Gravitational waves emitted from the gravitational ringing of supermassive black holes are important targets to test general relativity and probe the matter environment surrounding such black holes. The main components of the ringing…
Study of gravitational-radiation induced merging rates of relativistic binary stars (double neutron stars; neutron star + black hole; double black holes) shows that the first-generation gravitational wave interferometers with an…
Gravitational wave observations will probe non-linear gravitational interactions and thus enable strong tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity. We present a numerical relativity study of the late inspiral and merger of binary…
Coalescing black-hole binaries are expected to be the strongest sources of gravitational waves for ground-based interferometers as well as the space-based interferometer LISA. Recent progress in numerical relativity now makes it possible to…
When two objects have gravitational interaction between them, they are no longer independent of each other. In fact, there exists gravitational correlation between these two objects. Inspired by E. Verlinde's paper, we first calculate the…
The gravitational polarizability properties of black holes are compared and contrasted with their electromagnetic polarizability properties. The "shape" or "height" multipolar Love numbers h_l of a black hole are defined and computed. They…
Black holes are capable of reflection: there is a finite probability for any particle that approaches the event horizon to bounce back. The albedo of the black hole depends on its temperature and the energy of the incoming particle. The…
We show that gravitational-wave astronomy has the potential to inform us on quantum aspects of black holes. Based on Bekenstein's quantization, we find that black hole area discretization could impart observable imprints to the…